


trade all my tomorrows

by sunflashes



Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M, Mentions of past self harm, TW: Self Harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2015-01-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:56:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflashes/pseuds/sunflashes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is so much more clean cut now, there are plane tickets and there is security and there is that horrifying, gleaming gold flash whenever Patrick gestures excitedly or waves adoringly to the sobbing girls crushed to the barricades.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. there's a hole where something was

**Author's Note:**

  * For [littlesnowpea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlesnowpea/gifts).



> this is being made up as i go along, i don't claim to even have a plot for this, it's just a loosely cohesive study in 2012-13 peterick. 
> 
> (work and chapter titles from fall out boy songs)

The lies aren’t fun until you’re lying en masse. He keeps it clenched between his teeth as he faces down the reporter in a snapback (who looks all too comfortable in AK for Pete’s liking). He slaps it out of the air, fells it at its Achilles heel, _I’m not the person who can help you. All I know is it’s not._

He denies it three times, as it was prophesied. 

Once on Twitter, once via Bob, and once deliciously verbally; snarled into the vibrations of the bass in Angels and Kings. 

But they’ve all done the four-part harmony of entering through back doors and donning the sunglasses of undercover spies. 

The first time they convene, Joe crushes Pete into a strong hug; Andy tells Pete he missed him, which is unprecedented and slightly choked-up and raw; and Patrick—

He smells like someone else’s perfume and looks like someone else’s mannequin. He has cheekbones. His lips seem fuller and his frame impossibly slender. 

Pete knows the look on his face like he knows exactly how many teeth Bronx is missing. Pete’s a father. He’s seen this look in the mirror. 

He looks so happy. 

\----

At the show in Chicago, Patrick doesn’t look like a bird, a persona. He wears a simple leather jacket and t-shirt. He’s returned to his startlingly customary stripped-down softness; the curlicues eschewed and wandering mindset coalesced into certainty. 

He’s the best friend curled up with his head in Pete’s lap in the shittiest white van of all time. He’s the boy with the achingly sweet white teeth onstage, belting his heart out into the writhing masses. He’s the slick-sweet expanse of skin tangled deep in the fleeting sheets of hotel beds, bunks on tour buses. He is untroubled sleep, heartbeats synching, and oh, his eyes haven’t changed. 

It’s a different sort of celebration, this relieved exhalation and exclamation that _we’re back yet haven’t you heard_ , that you know what they say about believers and they were always the truest blue of their kind. The lighting of the shoebox venue is the same as it always was, but the shadows it casts on Patrick’s face are different than the ones seared into Pete’s retinas by breathless memory. 

He is relearning everything from scratch; the shadows and the undeniable equalizing feeling of a bass slung obscenely across his hips. He’s building up his calluses, his immunity to the sound of his words from the only lips that have ever mattered. 

He’s been parroting denial as a force of habit for months about the reveal, and in that he kept himself too busy to realize he’d been harboring it elsewhere for years. 

Everything is streaks of color onstage, and when Patrick traces the Sugar heart with his hands in the air, the desperate happiness of the crowd crackles in the air. He smiles over at Pete and it’s the anchor he had gone looking for during the split by dipping his fingers in quicksilver beats and sleek turntables. It’s home. 

_It’s all about the music_ , he would write later, wrapped in a Clandestine sweatshirt with shaking hands. 

\---

_And I would watch him like that, candid and soft between doorways and windows. Like he can’t tell I’m watching him. Which, in all fairness, he probably can’t. Either that or he’s just used to it by now, cause I’m always watching him. It kills me that doesn’t know why, that he can’t see himself the way I see him, and I want him to know, I want him to see, I want._

\---

Pete knocks his head back against his bunk wall, not loudly enough to make a sound, but hard enough to create a dull ache that he savors. It’s five in the morning and he mentally thanks whoever the fuck is on driving rotation at current, getting them to the next hazy nameless city that’s not Chicago, stumbling onto the next stage, using Patrick as an anchor for his volatile crowd-pleasing. Using Patrick as an anchor for a lot more than that, if he’s honest with himself, which he rarely is. 

Pete used to crave sleep when it got like this; he used to cry until he ran out of tears and mourn sleep like a half-forgotten, angst-filled high school love, but now he revels in the time alone and the hotel nights where it used to be sleeping in a shitty white van when he could find the time and will, usually with legs tangled between Patrick’s, each using one of the van’s walls as leverage to catch a few hours of fitful dreams. 

Everything is so much more clean cut now, there are plane tickets and there is security and there is that horrifying, gleaming gold flash whenever Patrick gestures excitedly or waves adoringly to the sobbing girls crushed to the barricades. 

He remembers between vibrating bass notes wanting to be the one to put that there so badly that he had tasted it like blood between his teeth. 

\---

Save Rock and Roll is a success. 

That being said, when Pete looks out into crowds now, he sees young women, college age and bright-eyed, sobbing uncontrollably along with Miss Missing You and he knows with a horrible, horrible feeling that he’s broken their trust, put too much of exactly what they (and he) are feeling out there, and he is filled with horror and regret and then a steeling, bracing wave of _that’s why we’re doing this, that’s why we started this, because we know better than anyone how it feels._

One particular woman stands out in his mind and he remembers her sitting outside the venue in Atlanta, sobbing and smoking a cigarette, and he jumped the fence to talk to her, to tell her that he’s sorry but that he knows, oh, he knows, and she looked up at him and said _I’ve never hated anyone as much as I love you and loved anyone as much as I hate you._ And Pete thinks that maybe that’s the best thing anyone’s ever said to him and he thinks that’s exactly how much he hates himself.

\---

The sweetness, the childishness is gone from the band, replaced with a deep-seated esteem and affection that brews like coffee in their veins, occasionally bubbling to the surface in their no-longer-drunken conversations and their really, intensely good practices. Patrick had said it best, they got to know each other as friends and humans instead of caricatures perpetuated by years on the road clinging to the band as all of their collective identity instead of bringing different ingredients to the table and mixing them to make something like Save Rock and Roll. 

It’s all very old. And jaded. And professional. And… slower-paced, and that’s exactly what they all need, a blank slate and an allowance for the way the years have treated Joe’s knees and Patrick’s taut cheekbones and Andy’s wrists and all of Pete’s bones. 

There are those absolutely electric moments when they lock into rhythm and rip into old favorites and they’re moving and thrashing and playing as one and it’s brilliant and beautiful and they’ve all caught each other crying and smiled through their tears because this, this is why they make music. 

\---

Vegetarian, slender Patrick who Pete kept up with during Soul Punk but mostly worried over, his hair was too fucking blonde, his cheeks too sunken, his wrists too birdlike, was entirely different than the Patrick he knew. 

The first time he had seen him in months, the first time they hugged at the meeting to cement Fall Out Boy back into reality, that terrifying, experimental creature was in the past and there, without a doubt, was a crisp, clean, extra-shot version of the Patrick he couldn’t get enough of.

Gone were the days of swiping his teeth across Patrick’s neck onstage, gone were the days of Peterpanda, but this new Patrick, this absolute vocal force, brought new tricks and traits and endearing things to every single session, every single show. Pete knows now that he drinks strong herbal tea instead of the large coffees he used to throw back like shots. Pete knows he takes naps in the afternoons. Pete knows he got into the only fight he’s ever publicly been with because the aggressor had insulted Pete. Pete thinks maybe he knows too much. 

\---

It’s two in the morning and they’re supposed to start the interview circuit tomorrow and to Pete’s surprise, Patrick is still on his laptop, headphones plugged in, glasses on when he returns to the hotel room they’re sharing (Pete’s pupils do not dilate, they do _not_ ). 

“Hey, what are you still doing up? I thought you were all about that healthy lifestyle.” Pete chides and Patrick looks up from his laptop in a moment of unadulterated confusion and wonder and Pete’s chest fucking _hurts >_. 

“Sorry, shit, I was lulled into an internet-coma. Doing a Q and A with my Twitter followers.” 

“Awwww, aren’t you charitable.” It’s not a question, just a typical Pete jab, and Patrick treats it as such with a soft shake of his head that Pete finds himself measuring against the high-school teasing years and coming away satisfied. 

“Hardly. It means the world to some of these kids. What’s up?” Patrick removes his headphones. 

“Nothing, just coming back from a movie with Andy.” Pete says, removing his hoodie and t-shirt to don a different hoodie/t-shirt combo for bed. Patrick says nothing but the right corner of his mouth quirks itself up slightly into a smirk at Pete’s hopeless wardrobe. 

“What movie?” Patrick stretches out his legs and arms, ridding himself of the Internet Slump. 

“A Spanish film, really, really macabre and creepy. I loved it.” Pete smiles excitedly.

“Of course you did. What was the name?” 

Pete of course takes a few runs at it in Spanish but shuts up when Patrick starts giggling softly. “Fuck it. _The Skin I Live In_.” 

“Oh!” Patrick’s eyes widen. Of fucking course he’s seen it. “I love that film! Almodovar is a genius. A really, really fucked up genius.” 

“Agreed.” Pete nods, sitting cross-legged on his bed. 

“Man, I used to watch foreign films all the time on the Soul Punk tour. I was chasing culture like it was a comet.” Patrick laughs self-deprecatingly, but Pete just feels hollow. 

“Nahh, come on, I’m sure you had fun.” 

“Oh, definitely, but I kinda, I don’t know, I lost track of my roots, as ridiculously cliché as that sounds.” Patrick closes his laptop and Pete is kind of honored by this, as ridiculously cliché as that sounds. 

“I feel you. I spent a stupid amount of time in New York with Black Cards.” Pete nods in agreement, not wanting to press into anything Patrick isn’t ready to divulge. They’ve had these talks before, stilting reconnection spiraling into hours talking about heavy, heavy shit, and Pete always wakes up the next morning with a hangover like he drank gallons of Jack and a sick, sour taste in his mouth from holding back words. 

“I just…” Patrick breaks off talking, removes his glasses, and scrubs his hands up and down his face. “Sorry, it’s been getting to me a bit lately with all the Twitter Q and A’s, can I just tell you something, and I’m sorry if it’s overstepping any boundaries?” He looks at Pete in such a way that Pete is incapable of refusing him. 

“Patrick. You’ve always been my best friend. Of course you can.” Pete feels so ill because he doesn’t believe it, he believes that after Folie, after so many nights sharing too much of their skin and secrets, after so many cigarettes Patrick to this day denies he smoked, after the phone call that stopped them talking for months, after cold blue screens being the only way he could keep up with what Patrick was up to, he doesn’t really believe it but he could never force that out of his mouth. 

“I don’t know, I guess I just… took it too fast.” Patrick takes a shaky breath and Pete realizes he’s actually shaking, like he’s terrified onstage or like during his first few interviews, and Pete wordlessly gets up and sits down next to him, putting a hand on his shoulder.

“Go ahead.” He murmurs, and remembers the taste of Patrick’s skin onstage under his adrenaline tongue. 

“I took it all too fast. The album, the tour, the weight loss.” Patrick bites down on the last word. Pete likes to think he knows Patrick well enough to know he doesn’t want to talk about the album or the tour. 

“You think so?” 

“I did _not_ do it right, Pete.” Patrick looks at him, guilty and exhausted. “I lost too much too soon and wanted to keep going too long.” Pete has a feeling that’s all Patrick wants to say on the topic; he always used to keep something in his ribcage until he literally couldn’t stand it anymore and then would blurt it out softly, at three in the morning, face pressed into Pete’s chest and tears painting the corners of his eyes and Pete would hold him and rock him back and forth and Patrick would clutch at him like a lifeline and Pete stops himself right the fuck there. 

“I… Wow, dude, I mean you looked thinner, and I respect that that’s what you were going for, and I thought you had maybe the aesthetic you wanted…” 

Patrick looks at Pete like get to the point, or maybe like _what the fuck are you saying I am not sure if I should be offended_ , and Pete removes his hand from Patrick’s shoulder and fists it in his own sweatpants, molding and mutilating the fabric clenched in it, and continues. 

“I’ve always liked you exactly as you were, Patrick, and I don’t want to lie to you and tell you that you looked good during all that, I mean, we weren’t exactly talking, but Jesus, I was so nervous for you and I didn’t think you needed to change at all ever in the first place and I just. I’ve always. Thought you were great. No matter how you looked. But I will say this, I think you look healthy and happy now and you didn’t on the Soul Punk tour and I’m just…. Happy? I guess? I’m never really happy, but you look so happy…” 

Pete trails off, embarrassed to the point of redness creeping up his neck. He won’t look at Patrick. 

“I… thank you.” 

Pete realizes Patrick is choked up and oh no, no, no, no. 

“Don’t… worry about it. You’re always gonna look great to me. I guess I’m biased.” Pete laughs after _biased_ and it comes out harsh and gritty. He gets up stiffly and moves over to his own bed. He lies down and closes his eyes. 

“I miss talking like this.” Patrick muses a soft moment later. 

“I do too.” Pete lies. 

He would miss it if it didn’t feel like open-heart surgery. All the same, he realizes to the reappearance of the sickening tightness in his chest, he wouldn’t give these sporadic surgeries up for the world.


	2. pull the pin and say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick plucks his shirt away from his stomach, and that’s what does it. 
> 
> (tw: past self harm, tw: discussion of past self harm)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: past self harm, tw: discussion of past self harm

In the middle of the tour, they stop in Chicago and Patrick smiles, all bluster, and says he's got work to do so he'll stay in the hotel that night. 

"But--" Pete starts and thinks better of it, for once in his life. Or maybe that's not it, he doesn't think better, he thinks worse because he sees a pale halo of usually unexposed skin on Patrick's left hand. Patrick immediately follows Pete's gaze and calmly puts that hand in his lap, out of view. Joe and Andy are already calling their families, walking toward their hotel suites and planning their nights after the show; Joe speaks adoringly to his wife and Andy his girlfriend.

Patrick ducks his head down and leaves Pete standing in the hotel elevator alone, eyes stinging and heart racing. 

\---

"Please, don't--" Patrick just, like, _moans_ softly when Pete's hand catches his elbow backstage at the Aragon Ballroom where Patrick's swiping his fingers across the circles under his eyes as he searches for his acoustic guitar. Pete is so thrown that he physically retreats from Patrick, his hands shaking and useless as they fall to his bass. 

\---

"She doesn't want kids." Patrick whispers, detonating the confession in the hotel elevator. Pete knows better than to reach out to him or say anything, but his knees lock and his fingers tense reflexively. "And..." Patrick looks down and away from Pete sharply; tears draw slick, glittering paths from Patrick's closed eyes and down his cheeks as they ascend the skyscraper. One side of the elevator is a glass window to the Chicago skyline and Pete sees Patrick suck his lip between his teeth in his reflection. The action springs a _visceral_ reaction in Pete. His stomach roils and he clenches his jaw hard. This is unbearable. 

The elevator door slides open and Patrick all but runs from Pete. It takes every ounce of restraint Pete possesses to let him go. 

\---

Pete knocks on Patrick's hotel room door at 3:25 in the morning. 

Patrick lets him in. 

"I... I'm not in a place where I can answer questions about this right now, Pete, I can't be social or whatever, I'm really..." Patrick lets the end of his sentence go like he wasn't sure what he was going to say anyway. 

Pete closes the door behind him and surprises himself with how quiet and not-frantic he sounds as he says, "Patrick, shut up, I don't want you to tell me about it, just--for fuck's sake, I've got cigarettes, like, what do you need--" 

Patrick plucks his shirt away from his stomach, and that’s what does it. 

Pete wrenches Patrick’s hand away from making the motion, so heartsick with seeing him, after _all this_ , still homeless in his own skin and they’re both scraped vulnerable by the vicious, bright aching in Patrick’s eyes when they snap up to meet Pete’s. Pete’s rough thumb swipes across the back of Patrick’s knuckles and Patrick lets out this choked, furious noise, reaches for Pete with his free hand, but Pete is already caught in the gravitational sway. They both lurch forward, crush together, Patrick’s lips full and slick and devastating against Pete’s. 

Pete’s arms thread their way around Patrick’s waist and he barely controls a physical reaction at how different it feels, how alien, but how his hands clasp together behind Patrick’s back like the most torn-up hole in your favorite belt. Patrick’s arms are behind Pete’s neck, one hand curled lightly into the short hair at the back of his neck. Their mouths slant open and together, and it’s like they’ve been speaking a foreign language all this time and now they’re re-learning how to be fluent in one another. Pete flicks his tongue into Patrick’s mouth and is surprised at how responsive Patrick is; he sucks it further into his mouth and then pushes his own between Pete’s teeth. As they share the heat of exhalations and tongues against teeth, their arms tighten around each other like they’re afraid of losing something they can’t lose again. Pete sucks Patrick’s bottom lip into his mouth and bites down and Patrick moans, low and hot, and shoves a leg between Pete’s. Pete’s hips move instinctually in response to this and Patrick laughs darkly, a satisfied, hot breath into Pete’s mouth. 

Pete unlocks his shaking hands from their hold around Patrick and brings one up to take Patrick’s hat off and toss it to the floor. Patrick plucks at the tag of Pete’s t-shirt and pulls up on it, forcing Pete to step backward so Patrick can remove it fully. Pete is stunned by the almost possessive, almost greedy way Patrick runs his fingers and a hint of nails down his chest, tracing tattoos and the curves of his musculature. Pete ups the ante by sliding his hand up Patrick’s v-neck, palming heavy up his smooth, nearly flat stomach (something in Pete’s chest clenches painfully) and dragging practically nonexistent nails around Patrick’s side and down his back. 

They’re drunk on the sheer head rush of each other’s calloused fingers; they shuck themselves of everything except their underwear and stumble back toward the lush, almost overindulgent suite bed. Patrick falls back first, splayed back against the white sheets and Pete maintains his balance for just a few too-short seconds to look down at him. His skin is pale, taut, soft, and blush-red spills down to his chest from his neck. He’s slender and full of angles Pete’s never seen before but needs to put his mouth on, all of them, and he bends forward to brace himself on his hands and bite down into Patrick’s flushed, sweet neck. 

A moan rips itself from Patrick’s diaphragm, raspy and full-throated, as he arches sharply into the pain, up against Pete’s mouth; the noise vibrates under Pete’s teeth and he sucks and bites at once. Patrick fists a hand in Pete’s hair and grips tightly, hips jerking up, up, up in aborted motions to find friction. Pete moves to straddle him, knees on either side of Patrick’s thighs, and he grinds down hard. Patrick reciprocates sinuously, arching and rubbing up against him. Pete slides his mouth up to Patrick’s earlobe and bites it once softly before sucking it between his teeth and Patrick exhales sharply; his hips stutter up and he’s so feverish and blithe against Pete, hot and hard and unapologetic in his motions. 

Pete sucks wet kisses down Patrick’s neck and flicks his tongue over a nipple; he’s is gratified by the shudder that shakes its way through Patrick as a result. 

“Fuck,” Patrick whispers, voice unsteady, as Pete licks and kisses hotly down his pale, sweet stomach, rising and falling tightly with Patrick’s labored breathing. “Oh, god, oh,” Patrick moans out as Pete bites a little at the skin below his bellybutton. His back arches and one hand pushes its way into Pete’s hair and grips. Pete pulls his mouth free and hooks his fingers around the elastic of Patrick’s boxers. He yanks them off and tosses them who knows where. Patrick’s cock is thick and sweetly hot in Pete’s mouth as he sucks lightly on the head and moves his lips down, down, down, until Pete can feel Patrick at the back of his fucking throat, yes, yes, yes; a delicious series of notes spill out of Patrick’s wide-open mouth. 

“Oh, fuck, Pete, fuck,” Patrick intones, breathy and pleading, and Pete creates suction while pulling off slowly. Patrick writhes, one hand clenched into the sheets and the other tightening in Pete’s hair. “Please, ah,” Patrick begs as Pete begins bobbing up and down in earnest, swallowing him down as deep as he can with every motion of his head. Patrick’s hips cant up involuntarily, matching the motion of Pete’s mouth. Pete’s hands clench on Patrick’s thighs, soft pocked skin and corded muscle underneath blunt fingers. His scalp is going numb from Patrick’s pulling but he couldn’t fucking care less, it adds urgency and a shivery sort of need down his spine. Patrick’s constant stream of noises and ragged breathing intensifies the sensation; Pete flicks his tongue against the underside of the head of Patrick’s cock and Patrick’s voice cracks into a high whimper. 

"Fuck, I'm gonna, I can't last much longer," Patrick gasps, and Pete doesn't want him to. He hollows his cheeks and bobs his head up and down as quickly as he can. 

The noise Patrick makes as he comes slams its way through Pete's consciousness. It bursts from Patrick's mouth unbidden and it sounds like the musical juncture of pleasure and agony and Pete will _never_ be able to forget it or the insurmountable tide of feeling it creates in him. As Pete swallows and Patrick eases his grip on his hair, Pete becomes aware of his fingertips digging divots into Patrick's skin.

He lifts his hands from their grip and is faced with Patrick, lips obscenely swollen and sprawled he belongs in a museum, with Pete's white handprints slowly flushing red over the scars on his hips. 

Pete _reels_. 

"What, what's wrong?" Patrick looks up at Pete kneeling between his legs, taut with emotion. 

Pete can't move. He shakes his head, then jerks it down so his eyes are fixed on the impossibly crisp white sheets.

"Oh, oh god--" Patrick recoils, draws his limbs toward himself, sits up facing Pete, and presses a hand to his mouth. 

"Is this," Pete tries, it comes out shot through with cracks and he draws his eyes up the curve of Patrick's bare shoulder slowly. "Is this what we almost talked about the other night." 

He's not asking. 

"Yeah," Patrick is finding it hard to look at Pete at all, much less in the eye. 

"Fuck, Patrick--" Pete leans forward, quick and sharp, like he can't stop himself anymore, and pulls Patrick to him in a tight, fierce hug.

"If I'd known..." Patrick hears Pete whisper, and he pulls back, looking him in the eye and placing a hand in the middle of his chest. He pokes hard at Pete's sternum. 

"Don't you _dare_ , don't you fucking say that, this is no one's fucking fault but mine." 

Pete's jaw clenches and his eyes brim, but he doesn't look away.

He reaches one hand toward Patrick's waist slowly, as though wary, and Patrick breaks their eye contact, looks down and angles himself away, ashamed. 

Pete's hand curls softly around Patrick's hip and his thumb strokes across the tight red and white scars there.

Patrick folds in on himself, sobbing tangled in the white sheets like a work of art, and lets Pete ease him down and cradle him to his chest.

The Chicago skyline blurs like traffic lights through a tour bus window and they fall asleep after Patrick slowly stops crying, alone together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen i don't bear anyone any ill will i just, idk, people don't like adultery so this was easier; also for the sake of argument, this is already not real life and therefore let's just do away with both of their relationships and say that pete 'sidekick dick pics' wentz is single for wHATEVER REASON, god only knows why, i mean _really_
> 
> i'm trying to make this like, fairly in touch with the events of 2012, 13, 14, so just bear with me and roll with it
> 
> plus, hey, first update in forever and here's some sex and angst, so
> 
> (chapter title from rat a tat)


	3. like your favorite records used to

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they come clean, sort of
> 
> (tw for discussion of past self-harm and description of said past injuries themselves)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol sorry i'm trash and haven't updated in actually forever but with the ab/ap business, couldn't hurt to just continue my meandering bullshit but make it more present day than previous chapters
> 
> also title from favorite record off ab/ap

Bleak high-rise sunshine wakes Patrick early. 

Pete is breathing evenly next to him, one tattooed arm slung over his face and the other cast out toward Patrick as if to reassure himself that he's still there. Patrick blinks into the grey daylight and debates silently extricating himself from the sheets, getting dressed, and leaving. He knows what it'll do to Pete if he does it, but he also knows that he is unprepared for what should come next. 

Before Patrick comes to any kind of reasonable conclusion, Pete stirs awake and rolls over to face Patrick. He doesn't move to touch him, but merely looks at Patrick, eyes shining with ache and empathy. 

"It was that bad, huh?" The joke sounds stale even as it exits Patrick's mouth. Now Pete just looks hurt. 

"Can... I please hold you?" He asks, voice raspy and deep from sleep, and that familiar sound hits Patrick hard. "Please?" 

Patrick feels his throat tighten with nostalgia and tears and nods. Pete moves himself closer to Patrick and offers his shoulder as a pillow. Patrick puts his head there before he can think about what it would feel like to pull away and which of the options would be the better choice. Pete's skin is warm and Patrick cannot let himself think about how much it feels like home. He slings an arm over Pete's torso and pulls his body flush with Pete's side. The sheets are crisp and white around them; the room unfamiliar and large around the bed. 

"How are you?" Pete asks, and it's not whimsical, as it usually is the morning after. 

"I'm... getting there." Patrick says slowly, and he hopes, probably in vain, that this doesn't offend. 

"Can I say something? Pete asks softly, like he's afraid Patrick will refuse him this. 

"Sure." The word is flat and full of dread, fear, hope.

"You, uh, mean... a lot to me, and I never, um, really got over you, like ever." Pete won't meet Patrick's eye as Patrick looks up at him. "And I guess I just want you to know that I would literally do anything for you, and cards on the table you've been there for me when I've fucking tried to die and I guess I just, I don't know, feel bad that I couldn't do the same for you. And if you need anything, like if you ever..." 

Patrick can't help but think that for a lyricist Pete can't articulate for shit when he's nervous. 

"I appreciate that, I really do." 

The silence is still heavy. Their embrace is not comfortable; it feels more cursory than real. They lie there for several moments, neither of them knowing what happens next. 

"Fuck, Patrick--" the words rip themselves forward from Pete. He's crying, a tear snakes its way down his cheek and into Patrick's hair. "You're my best fucking friend and we can't even talk to each other right now--" he cuts off in a choked sob. "Patrick, I love you, I fucking love everything you are and have ever been and you're every song I've ever written and you're always the song stuck in my head and I couldn't do this without you." 

_What is_ this? Patrick doesn't say. _Music, life, the band, being famous?_ He doesn't say these things because he knows. All of it. 

Pete shifts so that the two of them are laying on their sides, curled up facing each other like twin skeletons, finally making eye contact. 

"I can't handle the fact that I could have lost you to yourself, do you even know how fucking--"

 _Important? Necessary? Meaningful?_ Patrick autofills in his head despite himself, knowing Pete will say something tactful instead of try to psychoanalyze him because this is such new territory with such high risk. 

"-- _beautiful_ you are?" And oh, fuck, that catches Patrick so off guard that he breathes in sharply, eyes welling. That's it, right there, the crux of the issue laid bare despite Patrick's shame and it's not... that bad after all, and of course Pete knew. Of course he did. He's always known, because he used to give Patrick his old shirts and he used to still want to sleep next to him in bus bunks when Patrick himself could barely fit in one and he's known as long as Patrick has, of _course_. 

"I..." Patrick opens his mouth, finds he can't respond, closes it, and feels tears trace trails down his cheeks. 

"You're the most gorgeous fucking person I've ever met, inside and out, and I wish I could draw so I could show you what I see when I look at you. I'm fucking disgustingly in love with you physically and personality-wise, dude. You're it. You've always been it. You're every song on every Fall Out Boy record, you're the goddamn world to me." 

Patrick curls into Pete's chest sobbing, unable to react in any other way. Pete folds Patrick into a tight hug, clasped there to his chest. Patrick can feel Pete's racing pulse and shaking arms. 

"You know me better than I know myself," Patrick manages, lifting his head after a brief moment. "I love you so much, Pete. There aren't fucking words..." 

"That's my department," Pete says, and he sounds relieved, giddy, filled with adrenaline, and Patrick crushes his lips to Pete's, sinks his fingers into his shoulders. Pete pulls Patrick closer by the small of his back so that they're chest to chest, legs tangled and hips pressed together. Pete sinks his teeth into Patrick's bottom lip and Patrick lets himself be drawn closer by all these small actions, lets himself finally fucking relax into blissful, dreamy skin-to-skin contact with no taut emotional baggage restrained in every gesture. Pete skates his fingers up and down Patrick's sides for no other reason than to create a soothing pattern of contact and Patrick cups one hand behind Pete's head and scrubs his fingers slowly back and forth against the stubbly hair there.

After a few moments of deep kissing, almost teenage in its blitheness, Pete slips himself down out of Patrick's loose, wandering hands and scrapes his stubble down Patrick's chest. Patrick shivers at the contact and gasps when Pete bites at his left nipple. Pete continues to scrape his stubbled kisses down Patrick's body, and Patrick tenses with the vestige of fear and shame it will take him time to lose when Pete reaches for his hips. 

"Can I do something? If it makes you uncomfortable just say something and I'll stop immediately." Pete asks, looking up at Patrick, and he would never refuse someone looking at him the way Pete is. 

"Yeah, go ahead." 

Pete presses his lips to the scarred, pocked skin of Patrick's right hip and takes in the layers and layers of scar tissue. He catalogues the marks with his lips, some longer and deeper than others, some still angry red, fading pink and some white and silky and barely raised. Patrick is frozen and awash in emotion, he is overwhelmed with the power of what Pete's doing, overwhelmed by the symbolism and meaning behind it, and caught up in the sensation itself. 

"Pete, oh my god--" Patrick gasps out, eyes prickling with tears again, he can't fucking stop them at this point, so why bother trying? 

Pete pulls up instantly, looking up at Patrick, alarmed. 

"Fuck, I'm so sorry, it was too much, I--" 

"What the fuck have I ever done to deserve that, that was maybe the most wonderful thing anyone has ever--" 

Pete doesn't even let Patrick finish his sentence before his mouth is pressed to Patrick's left hip, kissing the galaxy of crosshatched red, pink, white lines there as he strokes the scars on his right hip with his thumb. 

"You're so fucking beautiful--" Pete says into Patrick's skin like it's a secret he's finally daring to say out loud. "I love every fucking part of you, Patrick." 

Patrick lets himself be carried by this sensation, by the bright, clean feeling of pure acceptance and comfort. He grabs Pete's other hand, the one not occupied by his right hip, and squeezes it tightly, hoping Pete understands the gesture. Of course he does. 

"Fuck, Pete," Patrick moans as Pete's thumb digs into his hipbone, and Pete opens his mouth to start sucking Patrick off, pausing to let Patrick nod yes before he completes the motion. Pete bobs his head up and down earnestly for a few minutes just purely enjoying watching Patrick writhing when he experiments with teeth and tongue. Pete scrapes his teeth along the underside of Patrick's cock and Patrick shoves his head away. 

"Jesus Christ, I'm not going to last if you keep doing that." 

"What if I don't want you to last?" Pete smirks up at him. 

"What if I want you to fuck me?" Patrick counters, and, oh god yes, Pete crawls up Patrick's body and kisses him urgently. 

"I can do that," Pete says, when he pulls back. "I can definitely do that." 

"Then what are you waiting for?" Patrick asks. 

"Turn over, I gotta find lube." Pete drops his hand down to his jeans on the floor from the previous night. He digs around until he finds a condom, which he tosses on the nightstand, and the small bottle he needs. He coats his fingers in lube. Patrick has turned over and Pete kneels back and teases at Patrick with his fingers before probing one inside him. 

" _Fuck_ , Pete, I'm not a teenager, go easy--" Patrick bites out, and Pete slows his motions until Patrick is rocking back against his hand, panting. "More, fuck, more..." Pete works another finger into Patrick and Patrick arches up into it, his back a pale, sinuous curve. Pete lets Patrick fuck himself on his fingers and watches it happen almost dazedly, so starstruck by the sight. 

"Fuck me," Patrick turns himself over when Pete withdraws his fingers. He threads one hand into Pete's hair and clutches at Pete's side with the other, drawing him in closer. Pete grabs the condom from the nightstand, tears it open clumsily with his teeth, and puts it on. Patrick wraps his legs around Pete and Pete rubs himself against Patrick before easing himself inside. 

"Oh fucking--yes, oh--" Patrick clenches his fingers on Pete's shoulder and tightens his grip on Pete's hair. Pete slowly pushes the rest of the way inside, relaxing Patrick by kissing his forehead, neck, catching his lips and biting at the bottom one. Pete bottoms out and begins rocking back and forth slowly. 

The noises Patrick makes aren't loud, but they are intense. Breathy, soft vocalizations escalate into notes, phrases, half-formed and raw, Patrick's vocal cords are wrecked open by Pete's motions.

"You can go faster, harder, yeah, like that..." Patrick looks up at Pete, eyes big, cheeks red, skin pearling with sweat, and Pete would swear up and down that this, if anything, is what an angel looks like. 

Pete cradles the back of Patrick's head in one hand and fucks him harder, faster, and Patrick gives himself over to it absolutely, all semblance of self-control discarded in favor of true, whole pleasure. One of Patrick's hands clutches Pete's left arm and the other is fisted in the sheets, twisting and mangling the white fabric. 

Pete bottoms out again and thrusts shallowly into Patrick, whose nails sink into Pete's skin and swollen lips fall open, crying out a breathy high note. Pete fucks him harder, lengthening his rocking in and out until he's almost pulling out entirely before pushing back in. Pete fucks him this way, both of them breathless, until he angles himself slightly differently and thrusts in hard until he bottoms out. Patrick comes hotly, untouched and almost violently across both of their stomachs, arching taut and shuddering hard, digging his nails into Pete's skin. His muscles tighten around Pete, who manages to stutter his hips forward two or three times before he's coming too with a hoarse groan, burying himself in Patrick and shaking helplessly against him. 

After a moment of harsh breathing, they make eye contact and smile fondly at each other, bringing their smiles together in a clash of teeth for a sweet, affirming kiss. 

"Let's stay here for a bit," Pete suggests, rolling over and disposing of the condom. 

"That sounds pretty fucking good." 

When he rolls back over toward Patrick, they curl up into each other's arms and don't say anything for awhile. Pete moves his hand to stroke a thumb back and forth across Patrick's hip and Patrick doesn't pull away.


End file.
